Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Literary hypocrites and the plagiarism business

I enrolled to an advanced essay writing course. About 30 percent of it dealt with plagiarism. So I read articles after articles on it, and I got the impression of watching a debate in a kindergarten. "He pulled my hair." "No, she started it, she called me a sissy." Finally I turned in my essay with (hopefully) proper citations.

J. D. Salinger used to be my hero, although my favorite was his less popular Franny and Zooey. When a Swedish writer wanted to publish a post-modern paraphrase, 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, Salinger sued him (Sulzberger). A similar narrow-minded attitude prevails in academy where the greedy business exploits the good intention of honest academics. Fighting literary plagiarism in the US now is mostly about money.

Monday, October 10, 2016

Don't trust me, I am a manager

Management is part science, part art. The remaining eight parts is deception. It is similar to astrology in this regard. Oh no, I can hear you gasp, astrologists are different. They suck poor people’s blood, not poor in a literal sense, but people who believe in medieval superstitions refuted by science decades ago. I wonder if there is any serious research on the effectiveness of management in general. There are researches that compare management styles and approaches, a number of business magazines (the shiny version of tabloids printed on more expensive paper) publish articles on the most successful managers of the year, of the century, of human race. But the higher price of a business magazine doesn't make it different from astrology.

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

The diamond cutters' rules of editing

All I have is a question I want to walk around: how to edit what I have written. I do not know the answer, I do not know the way, so I will digress for sure. I will digress, because it is worth stopping sometimes on the road and look under a bush, it may hide an unexpected treasure.